Bernardo Silva tweet controversy

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If any Svousers are reading this thread. So you've started calling Bernardo en-masse across Littlewoods FC Social Media platforms.

Well, let me remind you of your cult club and your cult players.

And let me remind you, and your younger fans, of he times when Liverpool fans (and Everton fans) used to throw bananas at black players when they played at Anfield.( and at Goodison Park)

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Path A: Tweet deleted. An apology. Mistake not malice. Learning moment. Silva and Mendy have written to the FA apologising equals small hole. More of an indentation. Now can we talk about Liverpool hacking servers, trying to trademark the word Liverpool and cheating in the League cup?

Path B: Tweet deleted. No apology. Doubling down of defence. Bit of a climb down. Well ok Siva and Mendy have written to the FA apologising equals dying in a huge ditch. Oh and let’s talk about this for fucking ever.

Pick which you think is the best path to take.
 
Path A: Tweet deleted. An apology. Mistake not malice. Learning moment. Silva and Mendy have written to the FA apologising equals small hole. More of an indentation. Now can we talk about Liverpool hacking servers, trying to trademark the word Liverpool and cheating in the League cup?

Path B: Tweet deleted. No apology. Doubling down of defence. Bit of a climb down. Well ok Siva and Mendy have written to the FA apologising equals dying in a huge ditch. Oh and let’s talk about this for fucking ever.

Pick which you think is the best path to take.

The opposite of whatever you think.
 
Path A: Tweet deleted. An apology. Mistake not malice. Learning moment. Silva and Mendy have written to the FA apologising equals small hole. More of an indentation. Now can we talk about Liverpool hacking servers, trying to trademark the word Liverpool and cheating in the League cup?

Path B: Tweet deleted. No apology. Doubling down of defence. Bit of a climb down. Well ok Siva and Mendy have written to the FA apologising equals dying in a huge ditch. Oh and let’s talk about this for fucking ever.

Pick which you think is the best path to take.
Except that path A would have got to the end of the highlighted part and then jumped straight to the highlighted part of path B. And there is no doubt whatsoever about that.
 
Path A: Tweet deleted. An apology. Mistake not malice. Learning moment. Silva and Mendy have written to the FA apologising equals small hole. More of an indentation. Now can we talk about Liverpool hacking servers, trying to trademark the word Liverpool and cheating in the League cup?

Path B: Tweet deleted. No apology. Doubling down of defence. Bit of a climb down. Well ok Siva and Mendy have written to the FA apologising equals dying in a huge ditch. Oh and let’s talk about this for fucking ever.

Pick which you think is the best path to take.

I just posted a long Twitter thread about this in response to a tweet from Ahsan when that succinct summary would have done the job better! Anyway, here's what I posted (edited to put it into the form of a BM post rather than a Twitter thread but otherwise unchanged):

City's handling of it has been shocking. I'm, let's say, not enamoured of Pep and Bernardo's attitudes but I also understand that if you've grown up in a culture where that's considered normal, that's how you think. I see it all the time in Russia where otherwise sophisticated, intelligent and fundamentally decent people express views about race and sexuality that horrify me. But then, when I was a kid in 1970s Britain, offensive racial stereotypes were everywhere and if they were still regarded as acceptable in our society, then I’d probably see nothing wrong with them, either. It’s a question of education, and neither Pep nor Bernardo has had that, regrettably.

When an issue such as this blows up, it’s incumbent on the club to know that Pep will want to defend his player but if he does so by expressing his sincerely held views, they’re going to play badly with a lot of people in the country where he currently lives and works. Even for those Blues who, unlike me, see this along the lines of ‘PC gone mad’ must surely recognise that this week the club has given the media not just a stick to beat us with but a fucking great tree. And yet it was all so avoidable.

All it would have taken would have been: (i) an early statement emphasising that no offence was intended but apologising for that caused and stating that the club would educate Bernardo in terms of what is/isn’t acceptable in this context; and (ii) either refusing to let Pep answer questions at all, or if he really insists on saying something, let it be utterly anodyne along the lines of, “Bernardo’s a great guy, he definitely didn’t intend any offence but we’re very sorry for any that was caused.”

The club’s silence has engendered an environment in which Pep has been left to dig himself, Bernardo and the club into an ever bigger hole when it was in the club’s power to defuse the problem before the current maelstrom gathered pace. I don’t blame Pep or Bernardo for that – they don’t really understand what they’re dealing with, so they needed the club to help guide them through and they’ve been given absolutely fuck all support.

For a club that likes to regard itself as so professionally run, it’s been amateurish. If you’d told me seven days ago that, this issue having arisen, MCFC would handle it the way we have, I simply wouldn’t have believed it and the situation is now irretrievable. We might lose one of our top players to a ban, while both he and Pep have been subject to vast media criticism (and social media hysteria). They’ll be finding it a very unpleasant experience and the worst-case scenario is that it could have an impact on their desire to remain at the club. That’s not an overreaction: if you live in a country where you’re vilified without really understanding why, then the natural response is to think about going somewhere more in tune with your outlook.

As I say, it was all avoidable. I don’t like to call for people to lose their jobs, because we all make mistakes in our professional lives. But the rank ineptitude of City’s PR in this episode has been so fucking stark that it really suggests that some people working in that area at the club aren’t fit to hold the positions they do. As I type this, I’m angrier at the club than I have been for a long time.
 
The problem is, there's that many negative things that have been said about black people or that black people are supposed to find offensive, that you could find a racist angle to any cartoon or person Bernardo compared him to. It's already been asked repeatedly but what can Mendy be compared to that isn't racist?

I guarantee that no matter what black cartoon anyone could find to compare to Mendy, I could make an argument that it was racist and offensive. And this is what happens, not just from opposition fans but from people who want to declare themselves as more anti-racist than the next person when, if you look at the kind of person that Bernardo is, and the relationship he has with Mendy, it's very clear that he's not racist and has nothing to apologise for.
 
I just posted a long Twitter thread about this in response to a tweet from Ahsan when that succinct summary would have done the job better! Anyway, here's what I posted (edited to put it into the form of a BM post rather than a Twitter thread but otherwise unchanged):

City's handling of it has been shocking. I'm, let's say, not enamoured of Pep and Bernardo's attitudes but I also understand that if you've grown up in a culture where that's considered normal, that's how you think. I see it all the time in Russia where otherwise sophisticated, intelligent and fundamentally decent people express views about race and sexuality that horrify me. But then, when I was a kid in 1970s Britain, offensive racial stereotypes were everywhere and if they were still regarded as acceptable in our society, then I’d probably see nothing wrong with them, either. It’s a question of education, and neither Pep nor Bernardo has had that, regrettably.

When an issue such as this blows up, it’s incumbent on the club to know that Pep will want to defend his player but if he does so by expressing his sincerely held views, they’re going to play badly with a lot of people in the country where he currently lives and works. Even for those Blues who, unlike me, see this along the lines of ‘PC gone mad’ must surely recognise that this week the club has given the media not just a stick to beat us with but a fucking great tree. And yet it was all so avoidable.

All it would have taken would have been: (i) an early statement emphasising that no offence was intended but apologising for that caused and stating that the club would educate Bernardo in terms of what is/isn’t acceptable in this context; and (ii) either refusing to let Pep answer questions at all, or if he really insists on saying something, let it be utterly anodyne along the lines of, “Bernardo’s a great guy, he definitely didn’t intend any offence but we’re very sorry for any that was caused.”

The club’s silence has engendered an environment in which Pep has been left to dig himself, Bernardo and the club into an ever bigger hole when it was in the club’s power to defuse the problem before the current maelstrom gathered pace. I don’t blame Pep or Bernardo for that – they don’t really understand what they’re dealing with, so they needed the club to help guide them through and they’ve been given absolutely fuck all support.

For a club that likes to regard itself as so professionally run, it’s been amateurish. If you’d told me seven days ago that, this issue having arisen, MCFC would handle it the way we have, I simply wouldn’t have believed it and the situation is now irretrievable. We might lose one of our top players to a ban, while both he and Pep have been subject to vast media criticism (and social media hysteria). They’ll be finding it a very unpleasant experience and the worst-case scenario is that it could have an impact on their desire to remain at the club. That’s not an overreaction: if you live in a country where you’re vilified without really understanding why, then the natural response is to think about going somewhere more in tune with your outlook.

As I say, it was all avoidable. I don’t like to call for people to lose their jobs, because we all make mistakes in our professional lives. But the rank ineptitude of City’s PR in this episode has been so fucking stark that it really suggests that some people working in that area at the club aren’t fit to hold the positions they do. As I type this, I’m angrier at the club than I have been for a long time.

Spot on. It’s the club’s handling of this that has infuriated me as much as anything. Pep has been left to defend something he doesn’t quite understand in a second language in front of the media a lot of whom aren’t exactly predisposed to do him or the club any favours.

I honestly thought we were smarter and more professional than this. Seems I was wrong.
 
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